Thurton & Ashby St Mary Pre-school

Our next jumble is on the 4th July. Please start saving your jumble donations and save the date to pop by 😁

We have a wonderful new Aviva match funding appeal up and running. Please take a look and share where possible 🥰🌳🍀🪏

Growing Outdoor Learners for a Sustainable Future Expand our outdoor provision with improved learning materials, woodland resources and nature spaces to support climate learning.

We have replaced our water walls with a bigger one ☺️

If anyone can make use of our 2 pallet water walls you’re welcome to them ☺️ We will be getting rid of them on Friday if they’re of no use to anyone ☺️

The children have very much loved using these.

Our logs around base camp in The Woods and our balance logs in Preschool garden desperately need replacing.

If anyone knows anyone who is able to source these we would be very grateful. We are looking for as many as possible. We have around 30 at the minute 🪵🪵

On Saturday Ellen and Kirsty enjoyed a beautiful sunny day at the Norfolk County Council Early Years Conference ☀️☀️

They listened to a wonderful talk by Professor Sam Wass-'Why the Outdoors Matters more than ever in modern childhlod'
Sam is a renowned child psychologist and neuroscientist specializing in infant stress, concentration, and learning.

And another inspiring talk by Ben Kingston 'Early Years Heroes'.
Ben is a renowned early years expert, author, and award-winning trainer, recognized for his work on child wellbeing, play, and emotional health.

They engaged in workshops-

'Early Years on a shoestring-open ended play that works' by Shardi Vaziri
&
'Playing with the stuff of the earth' by Menna Godfrey.

There was lots of other inspiring workshops and talks- taking away useful information and ideas to implement back at Preschool 😊😊

Some of you may have noticed that our growing area has had a wonderful transformation recently 😍

Last Thursday, the new area was officially completed, and we are absolutely delighted with the result! The fencing was very kindly donated by BAM Nuttall and expertly installed by Phil Collins 😀

We are incredibly grateful for their generosity and support in helping us create this exciting space for the children.

Thanks to money raised through recent fundraising events, along with grant funding, we have been able to purchase new planters, a water butt, soil, an internal fence, a greenhouse, and a range of gardening tools to help bring our growing area to life.

The addition of the water butt will allow us to collect and reuse rainwater, helping us to care for the environment while supporting our Climate Action Plan 💧💦

Our growing area provides children with valuable hands-on learning experiences, helping them to develop their understanding of the world around them while encouraging curiosity, responsibility, and a love of nature. Over the coming months, we are excited to grow a variety of herbs, fruit, vegetables, flowers, and hopefully some pumpkins too! 🎃🌼🍓🍅🥕

Today, some of the children have already been busy planting broad beans, runner beans, and strawberries, and they thoroughly enjoyed getting involved in the gardening activities.

We currently have tomato plants, courgettes, aubergines, and pumpkins growing happily in our greenhouse, and we cannot wait to watch everything continue to flourish over the next few months 🌱☀️

A huge thank you to all of our supporters who have donated prizes to our Grand Draw!
KETTLE Chips UK
Orchard Toys
Roys of Wroxham
Yare Valley Oils
Norfolk Snowsport Club
Jimmys Farm! X
Beccles Tesco
Tesco Harford Bridge Community
Co-op Loddon
Loddon Garden & D I Y
Sheep Dip Game
Norfolk Museums Service
Emporium Norwich
Booja - Booja
Morrisons, Beccles, Norfolk...
Norfolk Truffle Company
Norwich City Community Sports Foundation
Purely Pesto
Spoon Cake

And all of our pre-school families and friends!

There is still time to donate if you have a prize to offer 😁 please get in touch.

Tickets are available to buy now at just £5 a book - drawn at Thurton Autojumble & Classic Car Show on Sunday 24th May!

Down in the woods yesterday, we were joined by some magical fairies! 🧚 The children took great care of the fairies making them homes in cosy corners around the forest and preparing their dinner!

✨Perhaps your child could make their very own fairy house at home - you never know, maybe the fairies will pay you a visit! ✨

Today we had a special visit from Abbie at Story Magic Norfolk.

Abbie read the children a special Christmas story, sung songs with the children and played some festive parachute games. Abbie also read another of her books about a Dragon under the Loddon library.

Perhaps the children can tell you about the story?

The children loved your engaging visit Abbie-Thank You.

Attached is a poster of Abbies’ Christmas Story Time events happening locally next week. 🥰🎄📚